hope for the apocalypse
by altschmerz
Summary: The world ends like an avalanche, it starts slow then cascades down so it feels like it all happens in the snap of someone's fingers. The world ends outside, but inside the hospital walls, life goes on. It's a different life, but it is a way of life, and that counts for something. It has to. (zombie apocalypse au, gen, rated for brief injury description and slight language)


_i? really needed to make a zombie apocalypse au. set in season two after addison shows up but before mark does. miranda is nearing the end of her pregnancy, and there are mentions of said pregnancy in this fic, as well as brief injury descriptions, and general warnings accompanying the apocalypse._

 _technically this is a fusion verse with the walking dead, but no characters from that show appear here. just. for future reference, that might be where this is going. jury's out on that though._

 _planning on continuing this au, lemme know if you'd like to see more of it!_

* * *

 _I used to hope for the apocalypse. Now there is no hope at all._

\- _E. Horne & J. Comeau, 'A Softer World'_

The world ends like an avalanche, it starts slow then cascades down so it feels like it all happens in the snap of someone's fingers. The world ends outside, but inside the hospital walls, life goes on. It's a different life, but it is a way of life, and that counts for something. It has to.

Meredith feels glad beyond belief, when she has time to feel anything at all, that even while Seattle fell, Seattle Grace stayed standing. Without the hospital, without some semblance of normalcy, she can easily imagine herself giving in to the hopelessness of this new reality. There have been some changes since the dead started walking the streets, but if it takes patrolling the roof's edge with the unfamiliar weight of a machine gun in her hands to preserve any part of her old life that she can, Meredith will do it.

George is the one who taught the four of them to shoot. Not even Alex knew how in the beginning, but they all do now. Cristina doesn't like it, but by the end of that first week into quarantine, she's walking the roof with Izzie.

"Hey," Meredith says, walking up to Cristina, who stands as still as…. Well, as death, watching out the wide windows to the courtyard below. When she reaches her friend, Meredith quietly slips her hand into Cristina's, threading their fingers together and squeezing hard. It's somehow easier to touch people these days, easier to say what they mean to you.

"Hey," Cristina responds, squeezing back. "Stitched a guy's chest back together today. He was slashed to ribbons and I fixed him, he's probably gonna live. He was out cold from blood loss the whole time too, so we didn't have to waste any medication on him."

"Damn," Meredith says, impressed. "How'd he manage to get like that, with… Y'know."

 _With the world ended and all,_ is what she doesn't say. They don't really talk about the way the world is now. Not directly. It's like they think that if they don't talk about it, don't look it in the eye, it won't truly be real. It won't truly be happening. It won't truly be like this forever. Even knowing that up on the roof right now, George and Izzie are patrolling, it's impossible to say out loud that their old reality is gone.

"Crashed his car, the genius."

It's such a mundane answer that Meredith can't help but laugh, startled and incredulous.

"I know, right?" Cristina says through a fit of her own giggles. "Some things never change."

And some things do, Meredith thinks, watching Callie Torres take out an undead that got too close to the fortifications that have been painstakingly erected around the hospital. Two sets of patrols at all times. One is stationed on the roof, two people up on the helipad watching, always watching. The other is on the ground, a small but safety-in-numbers conscious squad that stays outside, watching for survivors that approach the safe haven that Seattle Grace has become, a beacon of respite in a world without much of that left to go around.

"Think he's staying?" Meredith asks, eyes still focused outwards. The sound of people moving about the hospital behind them is a low, background buzz, chatter that makes it so she could almost close her eyes and be back before all this.

The hospital may be a safe point, but surprisingly few of the wounded, tired, and hungry that stumble into their courtyard end up staying there. They all have places they're going, pipe dream destinations that are 'safe'. If Meredith has heard one she's heard them all, and she doesn't believe any of it.

If there is one advantage to having been a pessimist, even before all of this, it's that she hasn't been let down at the end of a long, life-threatening road trip to a promised haven, the culmination of which is just more of the same.

People do stay though, and those that do make themselves useful. People like to be useful when the only other option is endless days contemplating everything you've lost. It is, in an interesting way, almost like a self-contained city has sprung up within the massive building.

It's peaceful enough for the most part, and in an ironic twist of fate Meredith has never had more faith in humanity as a whole, but there has been trouble. It's not all been quiet. There have been people who tried to ransack the place for the medicines that remain, people that tried to get at the food store, the tools they have, the odd person who just wanted someone to hurt, but that was taken care of quick enough. No uprising of sorts has ever gotten farther than one rogue hostage taker with a scalpel.

There have been nights Meredith spent patrolling the roof with Alex, the things she's heard him say about what he's had to do, the blood on his hands, and she shudders remembering it. Those instances have a cost. She would hate to have to live with the things Alex has done, in the name of protecting them.

"For a while at least, the dude doesn't have a choice," snorts Cristina, giving Meredith's hand one final tiny shake before letting it go and turning away from the window. Meredith follows her as she starts off towards the stairs. "The way he was the last time I saw him, it'll be a miracle if he can sit up within a week."

"Fair enough," Meredith mutters, jogging a little to keep up with Cristina's brusque pace.

Miranda spares a moment to wave at them from where she stands with Richard and Derek, discussing something. She's noticeably near her due date now, and it's something Meredith worries about when she lays on her bunk, trying to sleep – what they're going to do when the baby comes. It's not like it will be the hospital's first birth since the apocalypse got into full swing, but this is _Miranda_ , and they're all filled with dread.

There's so much that could go wrong.

There's so much that already has.

And it continues to, when Meredith and Cristina disappear. They're on a supply run, and they're supposed to be back by now, as Alex has said to Miranda at least three times in the last half an hour.

"I know when they were supposed to be back, Karev," Miranda snaps after the third time, causing Alex to pivot sharply and walk away from where she sits by the window. He only gets a few steps before turning on his heel and walks back, pacing the same twelve feet of floor over and over until Miranda is sure he's going to wear a track in it.

With the cell towers down and no way to communicate with those who've left the walls of the hospital, the only way to tell if something has gone wrong is how long someone is missing for. There are maps around, tourist guides that have been turned into a 'where's where' of places that haven't been entirely looted clean. Meredith and Cristina were headed to a place that took an hour to get to. Factoring in an hour for scavenging supplies and an hour for return, that's three hours total. They left with a promise to be safe and fast.

That was six hours ago.

"I'm going to look for them," Alex announces, stopping in his tracks, staring out the window at the light rain still coming down. "It's been too long, something's happened."

"That is a _terrible_ idea," says Miranda immediately. "You can't just tear off the moment you think something might've happened, you'll get yourself killed."

"I can't just leave them out there, it's Meredith and Cristina!" He starts to say something else but breaks off, standing in the middle of the floor with his hands held in front of him, palms up like he's entreating her to understand. Where he'd been staring out the window at the rain before, Alex's eyes have dropped to his own hands. They're shaking, minute tremors running through them every couple of seconds. "If I don't get them," he says finally, finding his voice again. "If I don't go after them, what does that make me?"

"Alive," answers Miranda, more sharply than she'd entirely meant to. She's counted on her hands these days the number of people she's known and lost, and she's had to start over, ran out of fingers to put names to. Not an hour goes by that the thought doesn't occur to her that she hasn't seen her husband since the day it all went to hell, no idea where the father of her child is, if he's still alive at all, so close to the day her child will be born.

He may try her patience at the best of times, but Miranda Bailey has seen two of her people leave this hospital today and not come back, and she'll be damned before she just stands back and _lets_ Alex Karev walk out those doors.

"If I'm _alive_ ," Alex says, the word coming out like a bitter taste on the back of his tongue, "and I'm not _human_ anymore, I'm no better than _them_." He points out the window at the fortifications around the hospital, what they all know lies beyond. "If I don't go after Mere and Cristina, I _am_ them."

Miranda can't find it in herself to argue with that. Hell, she would've gone with him herself, were she not restricted by Addison Montgomery from leaving the hospital at all. So she did the next best thing, and made sure that when Alex did leave after them, he didn't leave alone.

Addison and Alex, Seattle Grace jackets zipped up to their chins and medical supplies strapped to their backs, are almost out of the building when they run into Jackson Avery, who steps into their line of sight and says, "I'm coming with you."

Jackson had come through the hospital's doors with April Kepner and handfuls of other Mercy West doctors who made it out after Mercy West fell. Alex has heard the stories about what happened, he's heard about Charles Percy and Reed Adamson, seen the way Jackson and April stick together like hunted people.

Some days, Alex worries about Jackson. He worries about the way Jackson throws himself in the path of things, but he also knows trying to be the hero, over and over until it wipes out all the times you weren't. So, instead of voicing doubt or cautioning against any more unnecessary risk of life, Alex nods shortly and tells him to grab a pack.

Addison drives, mainly because she gets antsy if she doesn't. She grips the steering wheel with blanched knuckles while Jackson sits in the passenger's seat navigating and Alex stares out the window slotting bullets into the clip of a Baretta.

It turns out that when you don't keep up the maintenance of buildings in cities like Seattle, the rain damages them, and the roofs sometimes cave in.

Standing in the parking, Alex sees the car Meredith and Cristina had taken, empty and rain spattered and parked, to his own vague amusement, neatly in a space near the front of the store. For their rescue party's part, Addison screeched to a stop haphazardly strewn across three spaces. Jackson gets out first, and when he looks up at the abandoned store he sees what's wrong with it. His hand clenches spasmodically around the strap of his backpack and Alex frowns.

"What do you see?"

"The roof's gone in."

The look on Jackson's face isn't fear. Alex has seen too much fear on the faces of friends and strangers and everything in between to mistake that emotion for anything else. No, what is forming on Jackson's face, tightening his expression and putting something hunted in his eyes, it isn't fear. He isn't looking at an abandoned building with a caved roof and imagining what could have happened, what might be waiting inside.

He's remembering.

Alex looks at that expression, thinks about the day Jackson and April showed up with a couple handfuls of Mercy West staff members, and puts his hand on Jackson's shoulder on the way in. He squeezes, hard and brief, passing into the touch everything he doesn't know how to say.

 _I know what you've lost and you know I'm afraid I'm about to lose the same thing, and you're risking your life to make sure I don't._

 _Thank you._

 _I'm glad you made it._

They'd been in, of all places, the pharmacy section when the roof caved in. It happened so fast neither Cristina nor Meredith had time to so much as dive out of the way. Meredith bore the brunt of the collapse, Cristina having been crouched beside a shelf when the tiling came down. The shelf fell on her leg, with debris wedged against it preventing her from lifting it. Meredith lies crumpled on the floor just a few feet away, and as far as Cristina can tell, she hasn't so much as moaned since the fall.

Cristina has no idea how long she sits there, quietly calling Meredith's name and hoping nothing shows up to further ruin their day before they're found. She _can_ say, however, that she has never been more glad to see Alex Karev in her life.

When he rounds the corner, boots splashing through an inch or so of dirty water that came down with the tiling, she isn't expecting Addison Montgomery and Jackson Avery to follow immediately after. It lights some kind of warmth in her that she squashes down and buries. Feeling warm inside because people not beholden to her at all risked their lives necks to be here standing in front of her now is something Cristina will call up later, will hold onto in moments when the world seems too dark and cold to bear. Now, it won't help her get out of this crumbling store.

Addison walks over immediately, while Alex drops to one knee next to Meredith, and Jackson stands nearby watching for trouble.

"What happened?" Addison asks while pushing parts of the shelving, trying to work out how to best lever it up.

"The roof caved in," Cristina answers scathingly, peering around to where Alex is crouched a few feet away. "What do you see, how is she?"

"Alive. Heartbeat strong." That's all Alex says, and it's only marginally reassuring.

Addison and Jackson get the shelf off of Cristina, and as soon as the feeling returns to her trapped leg, she almost wishes it was still stuck. It feels like her leg is exploding from the inside out. Cristina spares half a moment to wonder if the damage done will be permanent, unable to bring herself to look at it, then grabs onto Addison's arm to pull herself agonizingly upright. It's an awkward shuffle, punctuated by pained gasps and swearing, to get to the car, and when Cristina looks out the window she sees Alex carrying Meredith out of the store.

Alex places Meredith in the back seat of the car with more gentleness than Cristina has ever seen him display. His hands cradle her head down against Cristina's shoulder, and there's a fire in his eyes when she meets them. He squeezes her upper arm, and in that moment, she knows it's not just about Meredith.

In that moment, she looks into Alex's eyes and knows that he would tear the world apart with his bare hands if it meant keeping them all safe.

As she takes a guarding, protective hold on the unconscious woman now half in her lap, she feels the same almost-anger in her, leg throbbing along with it. This world that's taken so much from them already has stretched out its greedy fingers and tried to take more, and Cristina is tired of it. She's tired of having things taken from her.

Looking into the front seat, at the back of Jackson Avery's head, Cristina thinks about how he came after them, how if she had to now, she would do the same for him in a heartbeat, pull this man she's hardly known a month out of a collapsed building, play Russian roulette with her own skin if it means losing even one less thing.

She looks at the back of Jackson's head, listens to Addison's voice, feels Meredith's head heavy on her shoulder and Alex's hand heavy in hers, and marvels that at the end of times, even when everything has been taken, still this remains.


End file.
